One general consideration. Mr. Woolford focuses on the mechanics of musicals. As he puts it in this blog post, he's tried to write the Haynes manual of the musical. Really he's trying to get writers to write more efficient musicals; ones with proper structure, consistent theatrical language, appropriate song forms and so on. All of which is well and good. But is efficiency sufficient? To put it another, you can check the oil, fine-tune the engine and spiv up the hub caps; but, if you're dealing with a Robin Reliant, is it really worth the effort?
What's missing is a discussion of creative instinct. Analysis necessarily comes after the fact, so where do creative ideas come from in the first place? The 'I Wish' song may be correctly sung by the hero and correctly positioned in Act I and correctly fulfilling the 'call to adventure' function in the story. But that doesn't give you "Wouldn't It Be Loverly?" from My Fair Lady. To get there, I think you need something else.
In this case, Alan Jay Lerner needed a trip to the opening of Covent Garden market at four in the morning. It was freezing and a group fruit sellers were warming their hands over a fire. That sparked the idea of writing about Eliza's wish for creature comforts. And why did he pick up on the fire, rather than anything else that morning? Why did it spark that particular idea rather than any other idea? I suspect it was simply a matter of instinct; it just felt right.
So the next step: what exactly does Eliza wish for in the song? Roughly in order:
Room
Warmth
Big chair
Chocolate
Warmth
Doing nothing
A fella to look after her
In terms of the story, it's only the last one that's strictly important. And, as it turns out, she doesn't really want a fella who will merely look after her (as Freddy would); she wants someone to love and someone who loves her (as Higgins eventually does). So what about the rest of the list? Well, they all make sense. Eliza is a poor working-class gal. Rather than stumping up and down the streets hawking flowers for a pittance, she'd prefer a bit of comfort (warmth/chair) and a modest bit of luxury (chocolate) and the chance to put her feet up (doing nothing).
But why these particular images and ideas? Why couldn't the song be about wanting the comfort of a warm blanket, the luxury of Victoria sponge and a weekend break for two in the Cotswolds? Maybe it could have been. Writing is about making choices. Logical analysis of plot and character only get you so far. They take you to the edge of the proverbial cliff but they can't force you to jump. When the choices are equally efficient, something else makes a writer choose one idea over another. What is that? Again, my best guess is instinct.
This is where the car analogy breaks down (but the puns are still working - wahey!). There's only one solution to changing a spark plug; with a musical, there are any number of solutions. If we analyse how musicals work by looking at musicals that have worked, then we get a false sense of inevitability. We feel as if the story had to resolve the way it did or that the song had to be written the way it was. In truth, it could have been very different and worked just as well.
It is, then, not just a question of how musicals work in the sense of efficiency; it is also a question of their worthiness. What makes this story, as opposed to that story, worthy of the telling? What makes this idea, as opposed to that idea, worthy of the choosing? This, I think, is a deeper question and one that can't be answered using mechanics or analysis. It requires something closer to instinct, a gut feeling for what is important and funny and beautiful and, above all, true.
I'm a big fan of Don Black and the song cycle Tell Me on a Sunday, which was later turned into Song and Dance for the stage. There's a funny line where the English heroine, who has hooked up with a Californian film producer called Sheldon, is describing him in a letter to her mum:
"Sheldon has a lot of meetings
Well, he's terribly ambitious
He's working on a musical 'bout Rommel as a boy"
The audience instinctively gets the joke. No matter how much you try and make them work, some musicals are never really roadworthy.
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